In September, the Dutch investigative newsroom Lighthouse Reports worked with six other news outlets1 to co-publish an investigation into how Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s totalitarian regime stole 300 Syrian children from their families and hid them away in orphanages in an attempt to force their parents to cooperate with the government.
Reporters spoke not just with victims’ families, but with psychologists, attorneys and representatives from NGOs who wanted to help. After the story was published, Lighthouse created a WhatsApp group to connect all of these sources and help the families get support. (Lighthouse reports that at least another 3,700 children are still missing.)
Lighthouse’s role was “not just to deliver the story to the families, but also to use our position and connections to benefit the families,” the newsroom’s impact editor, Tessa Pang, said in a panel at the Incubator for Media Education and Development (IMEDD)’s International Journalism Forum in Athens, Greece, last month.
